Western article about Samui tourist crime

[Orangutan]

though this one is more substantial than most...

 

Danger in paradise

Seething resentments on Koh Samui have sparked a violent crime wave that locals and westerners do their best to conceal

The murder hunt moved at lightning speed. Two impoverished Thai fishermen were swiftly arrested, interrogated, tried and convicted. The men - Bualoi Posit and Wichai Somkhaoyai, aged 23 and 24 - were sentenced to death on January 18, the day after Katherine Horton's funeral took place in the village church at Llanishen, Wales. Today they are still on death row, awaiting an appeal hearing. Not against conviction - their lawyers will argue that their lives should be spared since both men readily confessed.

The Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, a millionaire entrepreneur, publicly thanked the detectives for solving the crime so speedily, paying them a bonus of £1,500. The Horton killing was aberrant, he proclaimed; and, as a further reassurance to tourists, Samui's three most senior police officers were removed and replaced with veteran detectives sent by Bangkok. Security on the island was to be overhauled, with the introduction of CCTV, extra police patrols and new police stations, at a cost of 107m baht (£1.6m). And a new governor was brought in from the mainland, too. By February, life had returned to normal on an otherwise idyllic isle.

Or that was the image presented. In fact, behind the reorganisation lies a disturbing story. The Horton murder, according to Thai academics and civil servants who have submitted a confidential report to their government, was the culmination of "a social and moral implosion" on Koh Samui, an island that, over the past two decades, has been transformed from a pirates' hideaway, home to coconut farmers and peripatetic fishermen, into a raucous engine of capitalism. More than a million tourists visit every year - at least 60% of them from the UK - overwhelming the local population of 30,000 islanders. And a change in Thai property laws has led to many of these foreigners, or farangs, staying on.

These tensions, the report's authors say, have triggered a succession of violent assaults and robberies, break-ins and acts of vandalism - crimes of opportunity and spite predominantly aimed at tourists. Island families who have done well from the sell-off and incoming foreign businessmen have become embroiled in a rats' nest of competing interests.

The illusion of a pristine and bountiful retreat is maintained by the local authorities, the police and mayor's office, and local businesses, both Thai and western, lest reports of violent incidents damage the tourist trade. When the Samui Express, an English-language paper, dared debate the Horton murder, it was harangued by readers who demanded the paper "print something nice" instead. Refusing to be bullied, the same paper reported that a Thai had raped a second British tourist, Corrie Ann Holt, on January 21. Although this was unconnected to the Horton murder - the two fishermen responsible had already been sentenced by the time the second woman was attacked - the similarity of the crimes, within three weeks of each other and on neighbouring beaches, raised questions about the safety of tourists on Samui, the paper suggested. However, readers of the Samui Express, organised into a group calling itself "the angry residential bar owners", demanded the paper stop reporting criminal incidents, accusing it of being "as bad as the rapists" in damaging local business.

Everything bows before profit on Samui. Even the death of Katherine Horton was reduced to a sum. Local tourist chiefs, who joined village head men clutching joss sticks and flowers in a memorial service on Thong Krut beach, could be heard only hours later calculating that the murdered British student had cost Samui 150m baht (£2.2m) as British visitor numbers had immediately slumped by 30%.

Sakchai Chaitawat, head man of Baan Harn village, close to where Horton was last seen alive, was listening to his ham radio on the day her body was pulled from the sea. "I heard what Samui detectives were saying and it made me feel bad," he says. "The officer wasn't interested. He said to his men, 'We should say it was a drowning.' 'Maybe we could say the girl fell off the rock.' " Sakchai, who also edits a local newspaper, says no one - especially those who had investments in tourist reports - wanted to look too deeply into the murder.

In the days after the death, the Samui police put forward several theories. First there was no rape at all. Then it was four Bangkok guys who roared away from the scene on motorbikes. Later it was a Thai waiter from the mainland. And then - before finally arresting the two fishermen - Samui police falsely named as a suspect a Scottish IT consultant, Callum MacDonald, who had dinner with Horton only hours before she disappeared.

Three months on, MacDonald is, perhaps surprisingly, still in Thailand. When he arrived last December, it was the first time he had left Europe. "I originally thought Samui was like a small Scottish island: naive, even innocent, and friendly. I don't feel like that any more," he says. After Horton vanished, MacDonald watched as potential evidence was ignored. "All of the other tourists staying at the resort went," MacDonald says. "No statements were taken. The crime scene was not secured. Then, as one of the only foreigners left, I found myself accused of raping Kath. I couldn't believe it."

American engineer Kris Perkins was critically injured when he was shot twice by a Thai gangster after remonstrating with rowdy party-goers at a guesthouse above his bar. His is an archetypal Samui story. We traced Perkins to Houston, Texas, where he is still recovering from injuries that have left him partially paralysed and owing £30,000 in Thai hospital bills. The shooting happened last March and Perkins has spent a year trying to get the Samui police to investigate. "I have never seen a crime report. I have no case number," he says. "The island did not want to confront what happened to me."

Perkins began to dig. He discovered that the gunman was from a well-connected Samui family and went by a gang name. The Thai police's Crime Suppression Bureau has him listed as a convicted killer. In December 2005, the gang member was suspected of shooting dead a 33-year-old Thai policeman (a British national was caught in the crossfire, taking a bullet in the leg); he was briefly arrested, then released again.

Samui's future is in the hands of its new chief district officer, Decha Kungsanun, a man appointed by Bangkok, known locally as "the bulldozer". "I was shocked when I arrived," he tells us. "Crime, violence, slums, building regulations flouted, vulgar tourists, brusque Thais. The death of Horton was an embarrassment and really not a surprise. The men who did it were not from Samui. But they saw Samui as a honeypot - with no laws and morality. They would never have dared swim into a Thai village and do the same."

A lack of leadership, he continues, allowed a local mafia to run things. He was also surprised by how tourists behaved: "We allowed them to do things they would never dare do at home. A lack of respect developed on both sides." The rift between Thais and westerners is exacerbated, he says, by foreigners owning so much of Samui. "There is huge resentment among Thais that so much money is made here but much of it leaves the island."

Farang businessmen are everywhere on Koh Samui. Their faces hang from huge hoardings at traffic junctions. Their names are above bars and restaurants. They produce a library of property journals and run a plethora of charitable organisations. But it is hard to find a single foreign investor who wants to talk about crime or the embitterment of local people. Instead, the topic is how Samui is "going upmarket".

Paul Watson, licensee of Tropical Murphy's, on Chaweng, and president of the Samui Rotary Club, maintains that the murder of Katherine Horton and the Corrie Ann Holt rape were isolated incidents, blown out of proportion by the press. "We've a new police chief who I hear is very good. The Thais will sort it out. Development, too. Samui is going upmarket and we need the services to go with that. People hated me for saying it but when Tesco opened here, it was what we needed. And McDonald's. There's nothing wrong with giving people what they want."

It is hard to see Samui as a safe investment. The delicate metronomic beat of the island, the laws and customs that enmeshed it, have been thrown off kilter by the boom. For foreign investors it's simply a gamble: whether the island will be able to pull through before it falls apart.

 

-OT

[limbo]

Orang,

 

This is old news and in the future, if you post news, please name the source where you found it.

[Orangutan]

lim,

 

What's wrong your guesthouse on Chaweng not fully booked?

 

 

I also followed the story in the BKK Post, and The Nation about the Katherine Horton murder. Also remember reading about the Police Chief being replaced, and some farang business guy being shot? But I never read an article like this one that strung together all of what is mentioned in the article, from a more inside perspective. it was new news to me, and I think a good read.

 

I saw the article on the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree site, no source was mentioned. Sorry I should have provided that information.

 

Hope this doesn't ruin our close personal relationship.

 

-OT

[chuckwoww]

It was posted here, by me, in the news section a few days ago under 'Danger in Paradise'. With a link to the Guardian...

 

http://tinyurl.com/ryeyy

 

No big deal. These things happen.

[Orangutan]

Thanks Chuckwoww I completely missed your post. It evoked a good discussion. Interesting to me because I'm thinking of relocating to Hua Hin.

 

-OT

[limbo]

That's what I meant with it being old news OT.

 

Thanks for your well meant considerations re. my guesthouse, can't wait till you show up.

[Guest]

However, readers of the Samui Express, organised into a group calling itself "the angry residential bar owners", demanded the paper stop reporting criminal incidents, accusing it of being "as bad as the rapists" in damaging local business.

This is very Thai. And unfortunately a large number of Farangs who live here and operate businesses dependant on tourism buy into it (probably because they can).

 

A UK scholar on Thailand, Duncan McCargo, wrote a fascinating account of a study he conducted on the Thai press called Politics and the Press in Thailand. The focus was the Thai language press. He writes that "news gathering in Thailand remains locked in a political time warp." Further on, "Whereas in most countries a news story had to have a clear point, in the world of Thai political news these principles were anathema. The contrast could not have been more explicit with a western publication such as The Economist..."

 

Outside of Bangkok the standards are far worse. The English langugage press we read in Thailand, The Nation and the Bangkok Post, are far better than the Thai press, and they are just OK. Imagine what most of the Thai press is like. Now imagine what the local power brokers expect of the press in a places such as Koh Samui.

 

My guess: as Farangs continue to populate places such as Koh Samui and Phuket, a market for more intelligent and insightful media will develop, and this will be viewed as a threat to the Thai way of doing things. It will be protrayed as battle between Thai and Farang values, but it will really be a contest between (a) local vested interests who aren't used to any public challenge and ( Farangs and younger, more educated and westernized Thais who are fed up with local semi-feudal power god fathers and the trivial crap that counts as news in most Thai newspapers.

 

Despite itself, Thailand is changing. This sort of stuff has always happened. Now it will start getting reported in an intelligent fashion. This battle will continue.

[jitagawn]

Well put. It will be most interesting to see how these various views of social and economic balance will sort out in the press.

[Nervous_Dog]

<<." The rift between Thais and westerners is exacerbated, he says, by foreigners owning so much of Samui. "There is huge resentment among Thais that so much money is made here but much of it leaves the island.">>

 

Sooo - the Farangs BRING money to the Island, bad thais take it back to Bangkok, and Farangs get the blame

 

That makes sence!

 

DOG

[Guest]

Sooo - the Farangs BRING money to the Island, bad thais take it back to Bangkok, and Farangs get the blame

 

That makes sence!

It is like many things here. There are gaps in wealth since not everyone benefits from the influx of money to the same degree. Most Thais in Koh Samui have higher living standards because of the influx of money, but the gaps in wealth are more apparant.

 

There will be tension and conflicts between local mafias and vested interests (the line between the two is very blurry) in the competition for weath and they'll feel challenged by the transparancy that foreignors expect. And then, of course, there are the language barriers and foreignors are not always on their best behavior when vacationing in Thailand.

 

Although the Island should benefit overall, this will generate some some animosity between locals and tourists. And, when it suits their purpose, local vested interests will throw a little gasoline on the fire by playing the xenophobia card. It could be bumpy ride.